Clues about the past climate are buried in sediments at the bottom of the oceans, locked away in coral reefs, frozen in glaciers and ice caps, and preserved in the rings of trees. Each of these natural recorders provides scientists with information about temperature, precipitation, and more.
How do scientists collect evidence about climate?
What is the evidence for climate?
Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks.
How do scientists know about climate change?
Scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities from an understanding of basic physics, comparing observations with models, and fingerprinting the detailed patterns of climate change caused by different human and natural influences.
How do we collect data on climate change?
Modern observations mostly come from weather stations, weather balloons, radars, ships and buoys, and satellites. A surprisingly large number of U.S. measurements are still made by volunteer weather watchers.
How the world will be in 2050?
The world economy could more than double in size by 2050, far outstripping population growth, due to continued technology-driven productivity improvements. … The US could be down to third place in the global GDP rankings while the EU27's share of world GDP could fall below 10% by 2050.
How does climate evidence support the theory of continental drift?
Wegener used evidence from climate change to further support his theory. For example, an island in the Arctic Ocean contains fossils of tropical plants. According to Wegener, the island once must have been located close to the equator. Wegener also pointed to scratches on rocks made by glaciers.
What kind of scientists study climate?
Scientists who specialize in this field are called climatologists. The first studies of climate can be traced back to ancient Greece, but climate science as it is now known did not emerge until the advent of the industrial age in the nineteenth century.
What factors do Scientist believe might have caused climate change?
Many factors, both natural and human, can cause changes in Earth's energy balance, including:
- Variations in the sun's energy reaching Earth.
- Changes in the reflectivity of Earth's atmosphere and surface.
- Changes in the greenhouse effect, which affects the amount of heat retained by Earth's atmosphere.
27 Dec 2016
What do climate scientists do?
Climate scientists study the influences on the Earth's climate over time and how these might affect it in the future.